Delegate Renews Fight To Expand Death Penalty

RICHMOND — Del. George Allen keeps track of some of the most appalling murders in the state.

The Nelson County Republican recalls the store clerk in Abingdon who was shot point-blank when he triggered an alarm during a botched robbery.

"Then there was the one in Roanoke," he adds. "I think it was in an Arby's restaurant."

A cashier who protested during an attempted hold-up was brutally killed. The crook got nothing because the clerk collapsed across the register.

The common thread, Allen points out, is that both were attempted robberies. If the hold-up men had successfully finished their tasks, both could have faced death in the electric chair. Instead, the stiffest punishment allowed for them under Virginia law is life imprisonment.

"This is an absurd distinction" that protects the murderer who, because of a flub, did not commit robbery, he said.

Virginia law permits the death penalty only for murders committed under certain circumstances: during an armed robbery, during or subsequent to a rape, during an abduction for financial gain or with intent to defile a child less than 12 years old, killings for hire, killings of someone in the custody of a police or corrections officer, killings of police officers performing their duties and killings of two or more people in one incident.

Allen, for the sixth year in a row, has introduced a bill that would add murder in commission of an attempted robbery to that list.

Each year, the bill has died in the House Courts of Justice Committee. And Allen continues to collect newspaper clippings for his file.

His most recent clipping may sway the House committee and get the bill turned into a law.

A year ago, two men brutally stabbed a Henrico County convenience store clerk while two accomplices tried to break into the store's cash register. When the register jammed, the four men fled, leaving the clerk "to drown in his own blood," said Henrico Commonwealth's Attorney James S. Gilmore III.

Gilmore clamored for a change in the death penalty law.

Allen heard him.

So did Henrico Del. Ralph "Bill" Axselle, who intends to introduce an identical bill. Axselle's legislation may be the one that makes it to the House floor, because he is a member of the committee, a senior delegate and a Democrat.

Axselle also has the backing of Gov. Gerald L. Baliles. In his speech that kicked off the current General Assembly session, Baliles said, "It doesn't make sense that a murderer can escape the death sentence because of a botched robbery attempt. . .We ought to change the law."

The governor's support may be the push it takes to get it onto the floor for debate, committee members say. "It obviously has a better chance," said Del. J. Samuel Glasscock, a Democrat from Suffolk who opposes the bill.

"It'll roll," Axselle predicted. "I've persuaded a couple of my friends" on the committee to change their minds on the issue, he said, declining to identify them.

Allen laughs about the governor's endorsement of Axselle's upcoming bill. "You take your victory where you can get it," he said.

While the bill has the support of many commonwealth's attorneys, it's likely to be challenged by the Virginia Association Against the Death Penalty, a 3-year-old citizens' group based in Richmond.

The group's spokesman, Eric Gretenhart, worries that overzealous prosecutors looking to increase their conviction rates to help their chances for re-election may abuse the new statute.

"There's another side to that," he said, stating the organization's stand: "Why should anyone be subjected to capital punishment?"

Putting the moral issue aside, Gretenhart predicted that adding a new capital crime would increase the number of inmates on death row - now 39 - and cost the state millions in appeals. The U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that the state must pay for lawyers for indigent inmates appealing death sentences in state courts.

According to Gretenhart's statistics, the price tag on one inmate's appeal is as much as $1.5 million. "I'm taking a very conservative figure."

"That avoids the question," said Hampton Commonwealth's Attorney Christoper Hutton. "Why should a person who kills another human being" escape the death penalty because the robbery wasn't completed.

Hutton believes the General Assembly should go beyond Axselle's bill and take attempted rape into consideration as a captial crime as well.

He recalled the 1987 slaying of radio disc jockey Debbie Dicus, who was abducted, nearly raped and then murdered by Ronald Blanchard. Blanchard received two life terms plus 12 years for the killing. Hutton thought he should have faced death.